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What is Happening to Peak Pricing? The Two Horns

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What is Happening to Peak Pricing? The Two Horns

NemSight is able to very easily display the impacts of increased solar generation on the electricity spot price. The graph below plots the 4 large operational solar farms in NSW, (Broken Hill, Nyngan, Moree and Royalla) as bar charts against the NSW spot price, (purple line). This is for the 31st October 2016.

It is clearly evident that when the sun is up and the solar panels are generating electricity, the spot price is suppressed. This characteristic is evident on many days. The particular day in question is not unique. The price pattern has become one where there are often two price spikes; one before the solar generation has properly commenced, and one at the end of the day when the sun is setting but electricity demand is still high.

Of course, it is not just large scale solar farms that are contributing to this feature, it is the sum of all of the rooftop photo-voltaic generation that is also contributing to reducing daytime network demand.

It is of note that this trend is likely to become more pronounced in the future with increased uptake of rooftop p.v systems, larger size systems per customer and also many new and proposed solar farms planned over the next few years.